Refugee Status

location: Ecuador • South Africa • THAILAND

“They couldn’t get over the events they had faced before they came to this country.”

For days they walked, winding over mountains and through forests, crossing by foot into another country far from the eyes of the authorities. Perhaps you can easily picture an endless ocean of people fleeing from their homeland; men, women and children blurred into a line of faces and bodies, spanning far into the distance. Perhaps particular locations come to mind when you think of refugees: Syria, or Myanmar or the Mediterranean crisis. A refugee, by definition, is a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution or natural disaster. An asylum seeker is one who claims to be a refugee, but whose claim has not yet been definitively evaluated.

• Quito, Ecuador •

Decades of civil war in Colombia has created millions of refugees and internally displaced people over the years. Masses cross into Ecuador, either interested in local integration or hoping to be resettled to a third country

• Cape Town, South Africa •

Gloria is a refugee from Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and has resettled in South Africa

• Cape Town, South Africa •

Gloria's youngest son, Sage. Upon arriving in a new country, a refugee applicant has a limited amount of days to hand in their asylum application forms and official documents. This can be very complex without connections, when needing to find housing and/or without ability to speak the local language

• Quito, Ecuador •

This Colombian man tells his story to a refugee-aid organisation as they discuss how they can best assist him in his situation, either through giving money towards a small business or to help with rent or food, or in giving practical items such as clothing

• Tak Province, Thailand •

Mae La is the largest Burmese refugee camp in Thailand, stretching for kilometers along the Thai/Myanmar border

• Quito, Ecuador •

Most refugees in Ecuador live in small rooms with shared bathrooms and little privacy. It is common to be overcharged for housing as one who is new to the country without a framework of knowing the standard of what should be paid

• Cape Town, South Africa •

Gloria and her two older sons, Ajay (left) ­­and Paul (right). With the help of Adonis Musati Project she has received grief and loss counselling in recovery of her life and journey out of DRC

• Tak Province, Thailand •

The residents of Mae La refugee camp live receiving basic provisions but their travel outside of this camp is limited. Beyond being a school teacher in Mae La, job opportunities are few and there is a consequential repressed a sense of ambition amongst the people

• Quito, Ecuador •

Being a refugee in Ecuador is not easy. To be able to work you need to have a refugee visa. Some are denied access to this visa, whilst others are denied job opportunities when hirers discover that they are Colombian refugees

• Cape Town, South Africa •

Gloria and her husband and three sons live in this small house together. Despite its limited size, they welcome other refugees to share their home from time to time

• Quito, Ecuador •

Welcome, or bienvenidos in Spanish

• Quito, Ecuador •

Globally, one in every 122 humans is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum. If this figure were the population of a country, it would be the world's 24th biggest

• Tak Province, Thailand •

Half of all refugees are children. Here, children run the edge of Mae La refugee camp to watch the passing car

What has been most unsettling for us is to realise is that a refugee’s story of hardship, injustice, disappointment and loss doesn’t finish when they cross the border out of their country. Their plight classically continues throughout their journey and into rebuilding life within their arrived destination. Adonis Musati was a young Zimbabwean man who died of starvation on the streets of Cape Town whilst queuing to get his asylum papers.

Refugees deliberately flee from threat, abuse, conflict or suffering. From this place of grief, stress and trauma a person is required to enter into a country’s refugee application process, perhaps without the ability to speak the national language. We met a refugee-aid worker who rhetorically voiced to us a very valid question: how can we expect such people to integrate healthily into society without any acknowledgement of their mental and emotional instability? Thankfully, there are pockets of charities and NGOs we’ve met that decidedly respond to such needs and work towards the health of the refugee. We’ve met refugees who have flourished under such counselling and assistance and who go on to offer peer mentorship to other asylum seekers. Gloria (pictured above) is a refugee in South Africa who says that her passion in life is to aid others and help them come to a healthy place mentally so they will be able to live lives that are rich and then are able to extend that richness to those around them.

As Status:Welcomed, our whole movement of hospitality is built upon the belief that the extension of care, generosity and investment towards refugees isn’t exclusive to organisations and NGOs, it’s doable for us all.